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Of the many heavy-handed copy editing ticks employed over the years at the Washington Times, one of the most contentious was the use of scare quotes around the term “gay marriage.” Actually, I think they used the term “homosexual marriage.” One of the first acts former editor John Solomon performed when he took over two years ago was to tell the copy desk to knock off the quotation marks.
The other day, the divine Ms. MZ wrote an enthusiastically depressing post about some of the bad news that we keep hearing about the state of Godbeat reporting in the mainstream press. Grap a box of tissues and head back over there to read that post, if you dare.
Chemistry was one of my favorite subjects in high school. There’s just something about discussing the periodic table of elements that makes you feel like Bill Nye the Science Guy. Thus, I was delighted to read this Houston Chronicle profile on James Tour, a successful chemist at Rice University. Okay, I’ve lost some of my chemistry enthusiasm because I forgot most of it, but this profile by Eric Berger is compelling. Tour is among the 10 most-cited authors in the world, and the reporter could have easily focused on his scientific achievements alone. But he doesn’t stop there and weaves in details about how Tour’s faith impacts his science.
This is the voice of the father of Jordanian suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, who blew up himself and seven Central Intelligence Agency workers in Afghanistan in December.
When I was writing for The Jewish Journal, I learned a dirty little secret: Despite the great work being done by my paper, by The Forward, by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, some of the best work in Jewish journalism isn’t being done by journalists at all. While there is nowhere I would rather turn for in-depth coverage about the many facets of American Jewish life than the Big Three (sorry Jewish Week), a good deal of breaking news comes not from reporters but a few bloggers deeply rooted in the Jewish community despite the scorn their blogging earns them.
When the firestorm erupted over Brit Hume’s suggested that Tiger Woods receive the forgiveness and redemption offered by the Christian faith, I hoped we’d see some more substantive coverage rather than just the religiously sub-literate offerings of the histrionic. We’ve seen a few good stories about Buddhist beliefs and I was also appreciative of Lisa Miller’s post explaining evangelical Christianity to her Newsweek audience:
First came the news that the Boston Globe‘s award-winning religion reporter Michael Paulson had been promoted to city editor. Jen Peter, the Globe‘s previous city editor, was recently upped to metro editor and her first act was to promote Paulson. This is great news for him, but a loss for religion reporting. When Paulson hinted at this in his most recent Articles of Faith blog post, he mentioned that the Globe would find a new religion reporter if he were to leave the beat. We’ll keep you updated.
I know that we have already pointed GetReligion readers to more than a few tributes to the late Deborah Howell. But I want to add one last comment, focusing for a second on her thoughts about how religion news often gets linked to the hot-button subject of media bias.
